Those Were the Days
by IronAmerica
Summary: Being a hero never got you anything but dead.
1. Charlie-27

So, there was another prompt on guardian-kink. I felt the need to write backstory before working on a fill.

Un-beta'ed.

- o - o -

Charlie-27 dies first.

Yondu is facing away from his friend, whistling and sending his arrow into another bad guy's throat, and then Charlie is falling to the ground, gurgling and choking on his own blood. Yondu's arrow clatters uselessly to the ground as the Centaurian falls to his knees next to Charlie, cradling the man in his arms. Almost unbidden, tears start rolling down his cheeks. It takes Yondu a few seconds to realize that the person chanting "no, not him, please not Charlie" over and over again is him.

He shrieks, then, a raw, animalistic noise of pain and sheer, unadulterated _anger_. Charlie-27 is the first person Yondu met who never treated him like a savage. Charlie-27 treated him like a person and taught him to speak Galactic Standard and beat the shit out of people who told him to go back to his tree. Simply put, Charlie-27 is the first – and probably only – person Yondu considers his friend.

The shriek lights his crest up and the arrow lifts off the ground. If Yondu had paid attention, he'd see it rocketing around the battlefield, putting holes the size of his fist through the people he and the rest of the Guardians had been trying to stop.

It's not enough, because Charlie's patting his face with a bloody hand and coughing up blood as he tries to speak and Yondu can't make out what the man is saying.

The team takes Charlie to a planet he'd mentioned a fondness for and burn him, letting a breeze scatter his ashes to the four points. Yondu whistles a mournful song for the dead from his homeworld.

The team is never the same after that.

- o - o -

So, what did you think? Good? Bad? Want more of the _other_ Guardian team? Drop a line and let me know!

*The prompt this is based on mentioned that Yondu was, in a different Marvel timeline, one of the original Guardians of the Galaxy. This puts them in the same timeline, decades apart. More or less.


	2. Nikki Gold

Oh look, it's another installment.

Un-beta'ed.

- o - o -

Nikki Gold is next.

It's not expected, any more than Charlie's death was. Except somehow, Yondu thinks this one is worse. Somehow, somehow this one is worse – worse because it doesn't happen in a fight and she dies by inches.

He remembers Nikki being all smiles and laughter as she recounts some tale from her home. One minute she's upright and laughing as she adds more details to the story, and then she's crumpling to the floor, face slack and pale.

She gets worse from there. Yondu, Martinex, and Aleta don't leave the hospital in Knowhere for days at a time. Nikki tries to push them away, telling them they have to go save the galaxy. That's what Yondu thinks she's saying, between the wheezes and coughs as she tries to breathe.

There's no cure for this. She's just sick, and she's not getting back up.

Martinex and Aleta leave the hospital first. They tear up the bars in Knowhere and get into brawls with anyone who even looks at them funny. Nikki tries to give Yondu an admonition for being such a terrible captain, but Yondu doesn't leave. He stays at her bedside, face buried in his hands, tears pouring out through the cracks between his fingers.

She dies a month after her first collapse, pale and wasted, fiery hair dying out to nothing and scalp glistening with sweat. They take her to the planet where they laid Charlie to rest and pour her ashes out of the urn. Yondu lets the last of them filter through his fingers and watches them dance away on the air.

They're still the Guardians of the Galaxy after that.

The spark's just not as bright anymore.

- o - o -

So, what did you think? Good? Bad? Should I stop killing Yondu's favorite people? Drop a line and let me know.


	3. Aleta Ogord

So, since I'm on a roll with torturing Yondu today...

Un-beta'ed.

- o - o -

Aleta dies protecting two children.

The Guardians haven't functioned well since Charlie-27's death, and it's just gotten worse since Nikki died. Nikki was the baby of their little band of miscreant heroes, and it doesn't feel right to keep going without her. But they keep going, because what else are they supposed to do? That's what Aleta says, after she's gotten well and truly drunk. Yondu and Martinex nod morosely and raise their glasses to Nikki and Charlie's memories. Yondu finds them another job, going to save a planet from slavers. (Yondu can't help but think that it's something Nikki would have jumped at to do, complete with the requisite childish begging to be allowed to lead the mission. He crushes the thought and sets _Freedom's Lady_ towards the planet whose name he still can't pronounce. Nikki could have, he thinks.)

Aleta enjoys the mission. There's a chance to kill people by ripping their bodies apart with her bare hands. Neither Yondu nor Martinex have the heart to tell her to leave at least a few of them alive. And then she sees a slaver about to use two of the native kids as living shields. She throws herself between them and the slaver with a battle cry of her own and twists to shield both kids from an energy whip.

Yondu's world slows to a crawl as the whip wraps around Aleta's throat. It's like watching Charlie and Nikki die all over again, dying by inches and choking on their blood and they're dead they're deadthey'redeadtheydiedtheydied…

The roaring sound in his ears stops when Martinex grabs his shoulders and shakes him, yelling something in his rumbling, earth-shaking voice. Yondu comes back to himself slowly.

"They're dead, Yondu. Stop."

There's not much left of the slaver who killed Aleta.

Her people have something against burning bodies, so she's given funeral rites on the planet where Nikki and Charlie were given to the winds.

The winds will get her soon enough anyways.

- o - o -

So, what did you think? Good? Bad? Waiting for Yondu to snap at this point? Drop a line and let me know!


	4. Martinex T'Naga

Yondu's last friend is dead. Epilogue is next.

Un-beta'ed.

- o - o -

Martinex dies last.

The Guardians aren't as good as they used to be. It's hard to guard anything when there's only two people left of the old team. Yondu's shot down every single suggestion Martinex has come up with in regards to getting the roster back up. He doesn't want the Guardians of the Galaxy back. Not without Charlie-27, or Nikki Gold, or Aleta Ogord. _Those_ are the Guardians he wants on the roster. Not some wannabe brats who don't know what it means to be a Guardian. After a year, Martinex stops bringing it up.

And then it's like Nikki all over again, and Yondu's the only one there to watch the last member of his team – the people he's called his family for years – falling apart before his eyes. Martinex was always the strongest member. He's the one who should outlive everyone, not Yondu.

Yondu never leaves Martinex's side. He makes sarcastic remarks about the doctors, and the food in the hospital, and how stupid Xandarians are in general. He sings songs from his childhood, and talks about how he's going to silence the d'ast nurses who keep cutting their eyes at him. Martinex makes a few wheezy laughs and Yondu pretends that his last friend is getting better.

Martinex never gets better. He just gets worse, and worse, and then he doesn't wake up. And Yondu is alone, for the first time since Charlie-27 found him. He's alone, and there's no one there to back him up.

Martinex's ashes join Nikki and Charlie and Aleta's on Charlie-27's favorite planet. Yondu puts up a marker with language written in Zatoan so no one can read it and know who it's for.

He's the last Guardian.

And being alone hurts.

- o - o -

So, what did you think? Good? Bad? Want to hug poor Yondu? Drop a line and let me know.


	5. Epilogue

Well, it's the last chapter, and Yondu's alone.

Un-beta'ed.

- o - o -

Yondu burns their names off the walls of the ship one night, when he's drunk on Sakaarian burn-whiskey. He gouges the burns off with a knife and cuts his hands up, sobbing as his hands shake and begs them to come back so he's not alone in this galaxy. When he sobers up the next morning – and when no one is there to rub the back of his neck and then give him a slap upside the head for drinking an entire bottle of burn-whiskey on his own – he starts packing their things into boxes and puts them into his personal hold on the _Freedom's Lady_ where he'll never have to see it.

Then he calls Nova and pulls in every favor they owe him. There's pity in their eyes as they start locking everything on the Guardians down so that only an order from him and the Nova Prime can open it up (and that will never happen because Yondu doesn't want to remember).

A few months later, Yondu takes the _Freedom's Lady_ to the Hub and has her name and all the paint stripped off the hull. When the dock's chief artificer asks him what color he wants his ship repainted, Yondu has a memory of Charlie-27's blood, splashed darkly against his cheek.

"Paint it red like blood," he orders, tone cold and eyes hard. "She's the _Eclector_. Ain't no more ladies here."

_Eclector_ is fearsome. _Eclector_ ain't forgiving or a symbol of peace and safety and hope. _Eclector_ is a ship for someone who just don't care anymore. Yondu starts recruiting her new crew, digging up old lists of people he'd fought against. There's no point in saving a galaxy that just shits on you in the end, so he's going to stop caring and he's going to take it for everything it's worth. The galaxy _owes_ him.

Yondu gets a second-in-command on Knowhere, and swears the brat to secrecy with a yaka arrow pressed against his long throat. Kraglin brings him to a bar where he can recruit muscle, and that's where he gets Horuz.

He arrested Horuz once, and the man remembers him. Yondu laughs when the krutacking idiot tries to gut him with a beer bottle, then beats the tar out of him and drags him to the _Eclector_. When they're outside Knowhere, he threatens to airlock the motherless bastard to prove he's serious about his turn. (Later, he overhears Kraglin explaining to Horuz – with an appropriate beating as accompaniment, because Kraglin's just that crazy - that Yondu's gone and lost it because of grief, so shut the flark up and enjoy the units.)

Over the years, Yondu keeps collecting thieves and liars and criminals and makes a new name for himself. He buries Yondu-the-hero as deep as he can. Yondu-the-hero is the one who makes friends and saves people and gets shit on by the galaxy for being a good person. Yondu-the-thief is safe. Yondu-the-thief doesn't have to watch the people he cares about die.

And then he gets a contract to kidnap a baby half-breed on Terra named Peter Jason Quill.

- o - o -

So, what did you think? Good? Bad? Like this version of Yondu's (and the Ravagers) origin story? Drop a line and let me know.


End file.
